An Interview with Delight

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I was lucky to meet Delight Gavor from one of my very first weeks at Clark. I had just started workingat the Clark Fund, and I was to shadow her to get comfortable with calling. Throughout the past two years, I would then witness some of the many sides of her through organising TEDx and joining the Intervarsity Christian Fellowship.

Delight is one of those people who inspire through their walk of life. I chose to interview her because she inspired me when I felt trapped at Clark. Here’s our conversation, a couple days just after she finished her final moments as an undergrad:

C: Pick five words to describe the past four years at Clark.

D: Cold. – laughs – Growth. Family. God. Memories.

C: How has Clark changed you?

D: How has Clark changed me? Well, I’ve learned to be very independent. I’ve learned to let my faith lead me into dark spots, when I can’t tell what will happen. And I’ve learned to keep trying.

C: Okay. Share with us one of your best and worst memories here.

D: Worst is everyday that’s cold. – laughs –

(Don’t we all wish we can just push the cold away?)

Best was organising TEDx with the entire TEDx team. We went through so many obstacles, but we kept laughing. Also, seeing some of my friends come to faith.

C: What would be your advice for international students coming to Clark for the first time?

D: Don’t let go of your culture.

C: What are some examples of you keeping your culture?

D: I kept my accent, and my love for Ghanian food is something that grew a lot more…Just me wanting to showcase Ghanian fashion and Ghanian values.… [You should] celebrate it [your culture]. There are parts of the culture that make you who you are, and if you let go of those parts, you lose who you are. ‘Cause in the end, I’m Delight but I’m also Delight who are Ghanian. And taking those two things away wouldn’t make me who Delight is. But then even more, the likelihood of you being the only person out of your culture also makes it your responsibility to showcase to the world what it is – make people appreciate it because they may never have the chance to visit Ghana, you know? …Like that TED talk, Chimamanda’s talk about the danger of a single story, especially coming from Afirca where the African story is one-sided and it’s filled with poverty and all these things – in the end, you have a presentation of your culture so it’s also rich with so many gems, and you want people to know that. Other advice: find what you love to do and pursue it with your heart.

C: How’d you find your passion?

D: I was reading this book, and it talks about how true vocation is where your heart’s gladness meets the world’s hunger…And I love to create, to learn in different ways…

C: How did you find interest in education specifically?

D: How? [Just from having] gone through the educational system and just from talking about it…worldwide education is becoming a means to just pass an exam…whereas it could be an instrument for you to create your positive realities, and I want to transform education to set that standard for education.

C: Tell us more about when you discovered your passion for education.

D: Christmas break of my first year. I’ve never seen myself doing one thing – there was no one career that I wanted to do! It was more about what I wanted to do, and I wanted to improve the educational system. …So I asked: how do I want to do that, and in what way?

[This semester], I’m taking a Social Entrepreneurship class, and the professor kept saying: if not you, then who? If not now, then when? And also, there’s this other quote from Yunus or Gandhi: be the change you want to see in your world. Those two quotes got me thinking, why not now? Why not try and be the change I want to see in the education system?

C: Finally, if you could change anything about Clark, what would it be?

D: Can they create wind tunnels? Shut us out of the cold. -laughs-

And I guess more classes that teach about different parts of the world, we need to embrace culture a lot more. It shouldn’t just be left to ISA – the world should as a whole, should celebrate culture a lot more than it does. It’s doing well, but it should continue to challenge convention.

This summer, Delight will be leading her Butterfly Effect program in Ghana (check out this Clark News article on her project). In the fall, she heads to Harvard to complete her master’s degree in education.